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EgoPHobia #8 | October '05
Romanian cultural e-zine .............
since June 2004 ....................
appears in the even months
Marius Ianuş [translated
|
Ode Toilet paper; Explaining to a bum what poetry is; After Two Days; free |
Carl Solomon |
|
Adrian Ioniţă |
|
Axel Lenn |
|
Alex. Sigartău |
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Vasilescu Alvin Bastian |
|
Roxa Truţa |
Marius Ianuş
Adrian Urmanov
Marius Ianuş
(penname of Marius-Christian Drăjan) was born in
Predeal in 1975 and studied Literature at the University of Bucharest.
He is part of the Letters 2000 and Euridice literary circles.
His books include "toilet paper"
(Carmen underground series, 1999), "anarchic
manifesto and other fractures" (Vinea, 2000), "Mamijuana - best known of..."
(Fractures underground series, 2002), "the bear in the bin - a movie featuring
myself" (Vinea, 2002), and "toilet paper, preceded by the first poems" (Vinea,
2004).
Currently, he works as a desktop publisher.
Ode Toilet paper
Marius Ianuş
[translated by Adrian Urmanov]
With hands frozen
with legs even colder
I'll eventually go to Dracula
Mihai worked there people had to
put their hands on a certain image say
a few formulae
he received four letters in which he was told
it had worked
the old black and white mad chestnut trees are swinging
what did their flowers smell like?
I'll give Paul Miski's book
I won't talk to some girls who ignore me
I told them "Take me with you" and they didn't
take me
the poem didn't start yet
a little bit of patience
picture your best friend with his eyes yanked out
sticking his bloody palms to your face
OK
Angelo didn't return
to set free the time the bladder
the prohibited smoking
Maria was talking about a mirror
in which somebody didn't want to see its back
Miski will give me too the master's car
and books
Paul complained they attacked his computer
With hands frozen
with legs even colder
I'll eventually go to Dracula
Mihai worked there people had to
put their hands on a certain image to say
a few formulae
he received four letters in which he was told
it had worked
the old black and white mad chestnut trees are swinging
what did their flowers smell like?
I'll give Paul Miski's book
I won't talk to some girls who ignore me
I told them "Take me with you" and they didn't
take me
the poem didn't start yet
a little bit of patience
picture your best friend with his eyes yanked out
sticking his bloody palms to your face
OK
Angelo didn't return
to set free the time the bladder
the prohibited smoking
Maria was talking about a mirror
in which somebody didn't want to see its back
Miski will give me too the master's car
and books
Paul complained they attacked his computer
from the very beginning
the literary circle got crammed with pre-Stanescu poets
we are just pale hungry teenagers-
how to oppose that?
the poem didn't start yet
it snows outside the sweater, hung with green clips at the window
sweater, coffee with milk
dizzy flakes are spinning
and tersely
I felt lifted from the chair dancing with all
the winds among the branches on which let's write fresh
paint
and my soft bones were getting stuck to the bones of others I was sliding
as if bobsledding right into the palm of a poor
unhappy child
and I found myself in the head of a madwoman preaching
after a staggering clinical death
with the hearts of others in my teeth
with the exclamation mark between my pupils
with you
the poem didn't start yet
Cristina came back to go to the movie
I sat on the stairs with Anamaria
with Daria on my mind
not to get her rumpled
I stood with my nose pressed against the windowpane
to see who got first downstairs
in the snow
I wrote desperate messages on the notice boards in the department
with unknown recipient
I signed them anonymously
I took interest in the leaves that were still in the chestnut trees
and the poem that didn't start
If desperation exists, broken eyes
which the snow doesn't cover
it nevertheless snows
if toilet paper exists
written by me...
When I wrote toilet paper I was going in for my baccalaureate
then I was baking bread
Cucu was dancing dead drunk on Doors and yelling that the disciple
exceeded his master he was already in the Nirvana
The trailing was pulling phone lines from the street poles
and we were talking gibberish
George had begun to mimic me
he'd have climbed on the bench next to me while I was reciting
Popica had brought me money in the madhouse
It was told that he'd found me on the pedestal trying to shave
Davila
When I came back I was like a vegetable
I could only see straight forward
Mache had changed the notes in the computer
I had got out of a teenage crisis
I had tried to commit suicide
and I was writing a raw book
with its skin peeled
in which to wipe down all my
swelled imagined filth
I've written other poems as well since then but none like
toilet paper
it was a poem like a knife
in the spirit of a haiku: Those who masturbate
are flowers
and I couldn't ever but rewrite toilet paper
if I didn't grow tired
otherwise what's with this saxophone sounding rustily in the poem?
why do I only listen to Hooker?
and I want to return home
but not at home - we don't even have a home
somewhere where a home wouldn't be needed
beyond the whitewashed mask of the moon
on this side of this cheating face of a drug addict
who wants to break the shop windows
where there's nobody else anymore
or if there's a girl she puts you in a swing and casts a spell of life
over you
if there's a professor you shut up and he takes notes in a frenzy
if you're a child you give others the entire cake
if you love her she runs to the monastery
if you understand your brain opens and inside the brain
bursts
her smile like a diamond
and she's less and less somebody
snowman spread with ink smoking
the poem hasn't started
There are girls worth getting you out of your skin for
like a flayed rabbit
but none is her
there are living flesh monuments of loneliness
at night in the residence hall
I wrote a blues for them
But the poem hasn't started yet
this prologue is long because the snowing takes long
there are in it friendships that make my eyes more
hysterical longer closer to tears
perhaps you've read it for nothing
there isn't even going to be a poem
but you can read toilet paper
one fragment was published in the military high school anthology
Paul has it now
in toilet paper I wore my heart of a winged dog
wrapped carefully in my pocket
with my hands frozen
with my feet still cold
live having sex
in the snow
Explaining to a bum what poetry is
Marius Ianuş
[translated by Adrian Urmanov]
The sun ball clashed with the road to the Poiana
and got blood all over it
come here on the edge of the artesian fountain to see how
it's penetrated by the spears of the water
trust me the ball of the sun got blood all over it
you only have to understand
when a crowd of scribes wiped the sweat
of their foreheads the idiot exaltations
on the pages of the books trust me poetry is only
what you understand
poetry is when you want to tell me something
that should stick to my mind
to my heart, which is a sad fish dreaming
to fall asleep in a wet vagina
a sad fish dreaming to give its last breath inside a
wet vagina, still not to be found
in my brain, are ticking clocks that don't exist
are running taps long ago thrown
to the bin I love the sun but I can't know
if it loves me
with its forehead, blooded by the thorns of the hill now
right now
I don't love loneliness but nobody dragged me out
of its desert
nobody loved me I need somebody
listen
even a bulldozer getting on your nerves needs
somebody
and a dog with crying eyes sniffing
a trash bin
and a mad beggar fidgeting about at an
underground station
and all the people in the hospitals where I lay
for months
and all the cranes that lifted their melancholic necks
on the waste lands
as if they should have thrust their glossy hooks
in the moon when the whole
breath of the world stopped, and dragged it down
for my lover
who doesn't exist
After Two Days
Marius Ianuş
[translated by Adrian Urmanov]
After two days of thinking I'd die
after I swallowed a box of Piafen
and after I vomited it after
I dreamt a crowd of characters
who were all I and who were taking care of me
gently covering my pain after
that I called her
Come to me I told her now
I look like a potato that sprouted
come to have fun
we'll play beauty and
the beast at Predeal I didn't succeed to
fall asleep here I can my mother can't
live by herself at Predeal but I
felt I was going mad I left her
come to me Oana I love loneliness
Then I hang up and I told myself hell
is a white room where you lay tied-up and all
your teeth hurt and after they've all crumbled
new ones grow over night
already decayed.
free
Marius Ianuş
[translated by Adrian Urmanov]
I am somebody who's not dead yet
in spite of loneliness and cars
of good corridors and bad corridors
in spite of the girls who didn't love me and
didn't love me
I have a few meters of basement of my own
I know a few words I understand
some ideas
I have an expired passport and
very few hopes and
I want to have even fewer hopes
I can't be bought or sold
-so poor that
in high-school I sold the tapes of my mother
who I love
Interview
Carl Solomon
i have the eyes of louis
the hysteria of lestat
an no reason at all
to be angry to be sad
to bear the light of the sword
to carry my heart as a thorn
die: sun
your legacy breeds only necessity
Look fwd in Anger
Carl Solomon
one
eddye barzoon u'll bear my shit
u'll see my godgiven enemiiz
see what i see
see what thou seerst
dye ed, your sickness makes me sick
an when i hit rammstein's target bleeds
en-gel an-gie alpha an lipspit
two
the self awoke be4 dâwân
Ŷhe put his booth on
Ŷhe smoked a face
from the an-cient gallery
≡≡ Ŷhe walked on down the whole
the swine of life is drawn
draw it an f fwd it to me
in a bcc
Helter Skelter
Carl Solomon
i have dyed
diggin divin too deep
've seen no door
only caskets an fake dawns
i have dyed · been divin too deep
seen no door just my kasket
seen dalai lamas destroyed by red pakis
seen lotus snakes
in the shape of a razorblade shark
an i piss on you
like i piss on emptiness
like hippies dismantled in the sixties
by commies an stalins an castors
an i am weak but i'm takin a weak end
have dyed on your purple screen
an i became a crusher a revolution a neverending spiral
from nietzsche 2 bruegel from bosch 2 damascus
from babel 2 heidegger from bächleins 2 stars in the lake
immortal beloved
the moral ski inside my heart the empty throne inside my head
an i dive an i rap an i rock
an i scream an i hit to be blown
an i smile without stretching my face
The Paradisiacal Memory of Silviu Oravitzan [II]
Adrian Ioniţă
According to Tony Birch , a philosopher and scholar of philosophical imagism, "Aristotle describes recollection as a searching for an 'image' in a corporeal substrate (On Memory and Reminiscence, 453a5). These references to mental images or pictures as if they were separate entities in the mind that could be literally seen have had many unfortunate consequences in the history of philosophy, especially after Descartes. As a result, Aristotle is usually blamed for being the originator of the "picture in the head" view of mental images." [5]
Birch is referring to the Homunculus Argument, a highly debated theory
of consciousness in the philosophy of mind. In order
for an image to exist
in our mind it has to be an observer
like a little man in our head or
a homunculus to perceive it. But then, who is watching this observer?
It's like observing an image between the mirrors of a barber shop. The
homunculus argument is a phenomenon which shows us how absurd is to imply
that the act of self-observation is mediated by a separate observer. The
perception is not a just a mot -a -mot transfer of data from here there
and the visual world. It is rather believed that images are "processed
in much the same way that food is processed - broken down into its constituent
parts and then built back up using a different substrate, scaffold or
template. The new template includes the viewer. So on one 'side' we have
'the world', on the other side we have the world+the viewer." [6]
Even though it is undeniable that we have mental images, their validity was contested by scientific scrutiny and only in the past decades their study emerged from the battle with the rigid positivism of the Behaviorism [7]
In his book, Tony Birch concentrates on differentiating imagery types by degree of conscious control and apparent location in space. Of special interest are the memory and imagination images.
Memory images are defined as those deriving directly from previous personal experience and differ from imagination images primarily simply in that" while memory images are held to be accountable to previous experience, imagination images are not." [5] Moreover, imagination images are images of things impossible to experience and sometimes, continues Birch "imagination images have a degree of autonomy, and we 'see' or imagine things we did not actively anticipate. This can occur in active fantasy, or as Chambers and Reisberg point out, in the surprising conjuncture of imagined elements."
So, what kind of images experienced Boncompagno da Signa or Silviu Oravitzan, when they talked about" Memoria Paradisi"? The obvious response is - imagination images- since Paradise does not seem to be a part of their earthly experience. According to Silviu Oravitzan , his art is not a result of a creative process, but is extracted through revelation and is not conditioned by ordinary but by spiritual perception. This seems to open a new sub-classification in the morphology of mental images; of images, which could produce an effect on us, validating their own existence. Acording to this idea the act of perception reveals to us the external world, being at the same time a parcel of the self. Therefore, our experience is centered in ourself and not generated by the external world.
With this puzzling thoughts in mind, I looked one more time to the luminous and wonderful images created by Silviu, and I had the "revelation image" of a child who makes for the first time a drawing. It is a circle with two dots , a line for the nose and a curve for the mouth. If you go to Alaska , the South Pole , to New York, Iceland or Egipt or anywere on Earth , you will find invariable a child who will start drawing what psychologists called a "cellular man". An icon which isn't dependent by what they see outside, by culture , environment, similar experiences in thought or language, but dependent by what they carry and "see" inside, from a memory known only to them.
to be continued.
[1] "Cosmic Christianity", the National Museum of Catholic Art
and History, 2002-2003, New York
http://www.oravitzangallery.com/
[2] A conversation with Silviu Oravitzan. Interview by Deborah Howkins
http://www.oravitzangallery.com/InterviewWithSilviuOravitzan.pdf
[3] author Richard Heinberg on April 28, 1988. The event was sponsored
by The Association for Responsible Communication.
http://www.healingwithsoul.com/Cleo_as_Isis.pdf
[4] The Craft of Thought, Meditation, rethoric, and the making of images,
400-1200", (Cambridge University Press, 1998)
[5] The Nature of Visual Mental Images . 2005 Excerpts of the book under
printing can be found at: http://www.gis.net/~tbirch/hp1.html
[6] Robert Karl Stonjek:
http://groups.yahoo.com/group/MindBrain/message/826
from a debate with Dr. Alex Green at:
http://groups.yahoo.com/group/MindBrain/message/3000
See also Dr. Alex Green's book "The Science and Philosophy of Consciousness"
(2003) at: http://www.users.globalnet.co.uk/~lka/conz.htm
[7] One of the most important steps to draw out mental imagery from its
historical inconsideration was done by Harvard scientist Stephen Kosslyn.
In 1980 he wrote "Image and Mind" (Harvard University Press),
a landmark in the research of mental imagery.
# Adrian Ioniţă is a freelance writer living in United States. To contact him please e-mail : adrianionita@sbcglobal.net
On Patriot-ism
Axel Lenn
Seen as an act of devotion to one's birthplace, patriotism is an intensely polemic subject nowadays. The line between this ism and others less poetic such as extremist nationalism is vaguely real, in fact it's forced into discussion very often. One can easily encounter definitions stating patriotism is most surely a normal must and anti-patriotism an ugly disease far worse than treason, otherwise said having been born in a country equals to unconditioned allegiance to local norms, whatever the political or historical factors. Since the end of World War II, following a general migration trend, patriotism has been inflaming spirits seriously everywhere - to be more specific, such tensions surfaced in Holland, the most liberal country on the continent, in Germany they caused social violence, and the list goes on. Patriotism, intercultural clashes and authority failure - are these three ingredients of social disaster? A definite maybe.
One comes upon patriotism in early years, at home or in school: national pride, support to the country, readiness to pay the price of one's life and one's children's life. Naturally, intolerance is not far behind, then the road to extreme actions becomes unavoidable. Gustave Hervé or Lev Tolstoy would complete the picture above with other patriotic-related issues such as: armed forces, wars, political discourse and social status. Indeed, patriotism per se is not a doctrine, not a theory, but another manipulative tool in the few chosen hands serving certain interests, just like religion. And what better way to control the masses than through little toxic pills inoculated day by day? Surely not Pink Floyd's "The Wall". There is nothing defensive, nothing of a virtue, nothing harmless and socially normal about patriotism, au contraire. Terrorism is no stranger to patriotic ideas - for many reasons, a European extremist and an Al-Qaida Iraqi militant are equally comparable. Broadcast all over, the case of a woman who feels proud, because she is a "genuine American patriot" - having lost a son in war and whose second son is fighting in a war zone too - this is no fantasy, no isolate case unfortunately. Just like the good Christian principles, so harmless in appearance, but responsible for 2.000 years of conflict and war, of heinous violence and mass murdering.
Where intercultural clashes are concerned, the spectacle is terrifying: resentment, intolerance, hatred occasionally seen in highly educated people as well, a trademark of bestial instinct driven behavior. In some particular cases, such as the Germanic peoples, patriotism seems somewhat inborn: a single mother with a mulatto child is not a picture from Switzerland or Austria. Hitler's Germany is clear evidence of how good patriotism really is; consider Horty's Hungary too. People don't become atrociously nationalistic on the spur, it takes stupidity and continual, intense poisoning. For a final argument, patriotism has no positive record whatsoever, it never produced anything apart from violence and murder.
Since Godot vanished never to return December 22, 1989, analyses indicate an inevitable forthcoming phenomenology of the ego supposed to perform radical changes, socially and individually, otherwise portrayed as the dusk of a demonical era - though I prefer a dawn scenario where demons of past millennia are devoured by light. Man's mythical de-/re-signifier posture would eventually convert the regressive semeiology of musts to individual alibis in reinventing degree zero: neither this nationality nor some other, neither this nor that religion, neither master nor servant, neither good nor evil, neither male nor female, finally neither creator nor creatura. Differently put, the essence of these all, a genuine this is right for me because I, not the others, say so. A huge dilemma, issued decades ago, regards authority options: how can individual power be challenged? How can fully self-aware individuals be manipulated into a herd? Technically it's pretty complicated. Trying to balance the '90s outbursts of individuality, the exercise of power has become more and more violent, but the results are awfully pathetic. Authority failure is as clear as daylight. Are we facing an on-going dissolution of systems? Could such utopias as John Lennon's Imagine actually be possible? Well, for a critical outlook at least, imagine a world without this:
Ring, O bells, from ev'ry steeple!
Tell the story far and near;
Let the breezes bear your echoes,
Freedom's natal day is here.
Fire the guns and shout for freedom,
See the flag above unfurled!
Hail the stars and stripes forever,
Dearest flag in all the world.
Ring, O bells, and shout, O people,
Float, O flag, from sea to sea!
We, thy children, rally 'round thee,
Hail, O flag of liberty!
Float, O starry flag of freedom!
Flag our fathers died to save;
He on whom your shadow lingers
Never more can be a slave.
May "Old Glory" float forever,
High o'er vale and mountain crag,
See her stars on ev'ry ocean,
One dear country, one dear flag!
Ring, O bells, and shout, O people,
Float, O flag, from sea to sea!
We, thy children, rally 'round thee,
Hail, O flag of liberty!
["Song of Freedom", words by Florence A. Jones]
equilibrium verses
Alex. Sigartău
funny how birds sing
requiems for alleys scattered
in night. try to fire
the insides of vultures
praying upon sleepless souls
tormented by light.
candles and moon and hours,
or days, or years and,
in the end, lives.
they suspect nothing
suspended in voids
filled with something
one can grind down
to a faint hope
of reflection, of self recognition.
morning again. the lie creeps in
to lethargic proportions,
to armies left asleep.
my masked lover
Alex. Sigartău
murdering silhouette, i await
for the soft guitar to whisper
that which we cannot,
and delight the silence
between us like sparks of
wine among fires.
i loose track of time, this
secret kiss remains a blissful
forgetfulness.
this silent époque is
somewhat vain, the glissando
of torches aspire to music
all the while the tale
is the same, a bouquet of
clichés set ablaze for the first time.
my masked lover, you arrive
with trains, with fog and smoke,
with me afraid awaiting in the station.
bending glass
Alex. Sigartău
i looked forward to postponing
the ultimate shatter. i wish
i could have foreseen
what immortality does to dreams.
there is none, now, that would
make the light warm and
none that would bring understanding.
the broken splinters will act
just like daggers into the feet
of wanderers. i must admit
i knew nothing of failure
and ashamed to see that
i feel nothing resembling remorse.
this is an anachronism
in the mind of someone who
knows nothing of time.
with your dying breath
you think you catch a glimpse
of perception, yet your
blind ears hear nothing
of the hollow laughter.
love is the thin line between
mortality and divine fatigue.
Bitter Depths
Vasilescu Alvin Bastian
Witless feelings are still running down my neck,
Wasted by destiny's coolness and rust,
Thy sour lips are inserting needles in my reck...
Faith hurts and thy deceptive smile melts into my
dust...
I devour the jasmin from thy raw voice
And I can feel the star scissors from thy mirror,
Scarcely breathing the light breeze from my abyss...
Swing thy mind into thy absent tear : my ash!
.............................................
absent tears falling
and I'm drinking a cold glass of...thy fragrance...
absent tears falling
are you there? ...are you still there?
.............................................
We kissed among our whispers and we died craving...
Damn the satin full moon which shouted our names!
A demon is laughing, an angel is praying,
I'm smashing shy's depths, thy heart... It
remains...
Votive Light
Vasilescu Alvin Bastian
bright flavour of a broken flower's moon
digged mirage through sombre graves
they will all pour into the night's artificial art
gently burning it's divine in shadows
from the silver wax beyond the mirror
wild hours separate a faded winkling
and look for youth's scion
in the shaft potion where it remains burnt
crystals hidden in ash pearls
disappearing in the soft light's crater
and trickling again in pure flame
smiling it vanishes on the pages of infinity...
Evil Flowers
Vasilescu Alvin Bastian
Deciphering the rhythm of my flesh
Using the ruby scissors of your smile,
So cruel beyond,
So innocent inside...,
Just dance my deficit of brightness
And, then, evoke your deceased tear!
Please cry stiff lips above my grave!...
You used to sing the spells of silence,
You used to read your fragrances to me...
Your light and tender evil flowers
You kiss and seal inside my chest...
They wither in my artery...
Chained Rebel
Roxa Truţa
So dark you couldn't see anything until one morning. Your mind is lost
in a huge maze standing above an abyss, this unknown, uncharted and unfamiliar
territory that has never been explored. No one has dared. It may be a
way out or an infinite anxiety that will eventually bring you down on
your knees. You're on the edge, deeply speculating the fading shadows
you watch daily. They're black and tempting. You pity yourself for your
foolishness, and you're not the only one. You're too numb to hear them,
but you feel. 'If she is so clever, why would she be chained on a dreadful
smelling pipe ?' Precisely because you are clever, too clever to belong
in this monster called society. Nowadays blind society. Humanity, weird
exposure to permanent crisis, why do you keep setting the rules, never
going beyond your well-defined borders ? Incising your soul, black blood
pours and cockroaches swarm. Don't get scared, it's in you, and it proves
you're still alive, because the blood's still warm and the bugs are more
alive and energetic than ever before.
It happened. Sure, it always happens. You were scared, didn't catch the
train to 'happily ever after'. You should have found the key to your chain
by now, to run free. Who needs it ? It's easier to push everyone off a
cliff and run off to marry Tarzan and live in the jungle, just to spite
everyone who doesn't let you spread your wings. You found another late
escape from the chain : losing weight. You're so thin your structure can
barely be seen when they look at you from sides. Silent, swimming in a
thousand voids looking for the essential, you give birth to pain, and
you're lucid enough to enjoy it as an intimate feeling that no one else
understands. They can't feel what you feel and you don't even need to
move on, you need to live your pain. It's the most sincere and sacred
of all feelings and it can never be stained nor burried. So instead of
a pipe, this time your chain is tied to an iceberg, and you're right there,
feeling nothing but pain to keep you from freezing.
Then, in that bright morning, caked in filth and taking in incredible
words, throwing rocks at hypocrites and coaxes, you became an unscrupulous
fighter. But calling somebody 'stupid' won't make you any smarter. Saying
someone doesn't care won't make them care more. You create explanations
to accomodate for the hazzards of the planet and with an apparent calm,
you tick, you're a bomb of energy waiting to be detonated. You've found
yourself in your examination of self worth, you know what you stand for.
You stand for freedom and against preconceptions and stupidity. You fight
now, but not with yourself. Not anymore.
Safe from burdening chains - those were the acts of a rebel.